Let’s reshape civics to focus on the communities where students live and learn, specifically, the municipal issues that make — or break — their cities.

Dave Harvey of Parks People guides Maximum City students through their own redesign of a local park.

By:Josh Fullanand John Lorincspecial to the star, Published on Sun Sep 08 2013

In high schools across the country, thousands of Canadian teens will be getting their first taste of civics education this fall. Yet for far too many, the mere prospect induces groans and yawns.

Instead of inspiring curiosity about civic engagement, these classes — too often taught grudgingly by the teacher holding the shortest straw in a school’s staffing lottery — leave students bored and bewildered by the minutiae of parliamentary law-making. Indeed, the ironic outcome is that a program intended to spark their curiosity about citizenship, politics and public participation appears to have precisely the opposite effect.

So why aren’t parents outraged that their children aren’t getting the civics education they need? And why aren’t more educators talking about it?

As another cohort of young Canadians hunker down for stultifying sessions on the differences between the first and second readings, we should be asking how our schools can do civics differently — how to make it absorbing and immediate, instead of alienating and abstract.

Here’s one solution: let’s reshape civics to focus on the communities and cities where our students live and learn, specifically, the municipal issues that make — or break — their neighbourhoods: transit, parks, community design, architecture, public spaces, streetscapes, cycling, walking, social inclusion and so on.

After all, the vast majority of children have engaged directly with local government by the time they reach high school. They’ve used recreation centres, attended events in the community park, taken transit, learned about recycling. They know the name of the mayor, and may well have trenchant opinions about how well that individual is doing the job. They see garbage trucks collecting waste, snowplows clearing streets and new buildings rising behind construction hoardings. They may wonder why they can’t walk to the store, or how skateboarding got banned in the park nearby. The work of municipal government is ubiquitous and tangible and shapes not just our communities but the lives of children and youth.

The city is, in fact, the single most obvious place to begin teaching young people about civics, which is the study of citizenship and the structures and functions of government. This mandatory half course in Ontario could speak directly to students’ daily lives with real-world examples of problems in their immediate environment.

Teachers could ask them to tackle the types of problems our elected officials face: where to build transit, how to keep cyclists safe, or when to negotiate a great public space for everyone on pricey downtown real estate. Instead, civics students are fed a patchwork of forgettable facts about constitutional monarchies, parliamentary procedure and abstractions about citizenship.

Strangely, the study of sustainable urbanism and municipal government is not even a formal part of the middle or high school curriculum in Ontario, despite the province’s heavily urbanized population.

Does it matter? After all, civics in Ontario is scarcely more than a footnote in a high school education. Perhaps smartphone-wielding teens today prefer to engage through Facebook “like” campaigns or volunteer work for non-profits. And, as some cynics point out, most people only become interested in politics when they start paying taxes.

What’s clear, however, is that something has caused young people to tune out public life, with all the associated risks to the health of our democracy and shared institutions. In the last federal election, according to Statistics Canada, no cohort punched ballots at a lower rate than 18- to 24-year-olds, the same group most recently exposed to high school civics.

We can’t heap all the blame on lacklustre curriculum; clearly, there are other factors at play. Yet it’s important to note that the widely held perception that youth are apathetic is mostly false. Our society, and too often our schools, deftly constructs systems that cause young people to disengage. We trust them to drive, but not to cast a ballot. In a vicious circle, politicians at every level ignore youth issues because they know young people don’t vote. Urban planners and ratepayer groups plan teens out of public spaces. In the GTA, young people are the neglected stakeholders in critical debates, such as solving southern Ontario’s transit crisis and countering sprawl. Apathy and intentional exclusion are very different phenomena.

City as classroom

As a way to counter the malaise around civics, Maximum City — a curriculum research project started three years ago as a summer pilot at the University of Toronto Schools — has sought to develop an entirely new way of delivering this part of the high school program. It’s based on two simple premises: one, that teachers use the city as their classroom, and two, that they allow their students to collaborate on real-world urban problems that matter in their own lives.

The goal has been to develop new curriculum modules focused on a range of urban topics, drawing on the expertise of transit officials, architects, planners, designers and city hall insiders as instructors and content creators. These experts were asked to prepare a background presentation on their topic, and then present students with a non-theoretical local problem that must be solved collaboratively.

In the classroom, we’ve marvelled as students work in teams to tackle tough municipal issues, such as expanding the city’s transit network, creating inclusive public spaces, or redesigning local schools using environmental, social and economical principles. Since they are already stakeholders in these issues, these youth have little difficulty grasping the challenges and then translating what they’ve learned into action. Yes, the process is intense and messy, but their solutions are always fresh, practical and innovative.

The kids, in sum, engage in much the same way as do their adults peers who take the time to participate in transit consultations, urban design workshops and other community projects.

Since its inception, Maximum City has grown into a series of summer camps for kids from more than 20 schools across the GTA, while the curriculum developed by the experts continues to be refined by experienced educators and OISE teacher candidates. It is now taught to every student at the University of Toronto Schools as part of their Canadian and world studies requirement. The program has also been picked up by teachers at several other Toronto District School Board schools and is gaining attention regionally and even internationally.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that an urban-focused approach to civics will yield a generation of informed voters and engaged citizens. But based on the reactions of the students who’ve come through the program, there’s clearly an untapped opportunity to deliver this sort of learning by allowing students to draw on their own experiences as urban dwellers — including the experience of being ignored or marginalized by local governments and politicians.

Moreover, a curriculum that revolves around problem-solving not only anticipates the reality of living in a complicated urban world; it also entices students to join the crucial conversations about how to address the urban sustainability and resiliency challenges they will inherit as adults. Those solutions will require fresh eyes, practicality, innovation and, most importantly, a willingness to both speak out and collaborate to tackle local issues.

As one Grade 10 participant put it, “I used to think that wherever I was living, I should just accept it and I never once thought that I could change my community. Now, wherever I’m walking I think about how that place can be improved.”

Josh Fullan teaches civics and French at University of Toronto Schools and is the founder of Maximum City. Toronto urban affairs journalist John Lorinc has participated in the Maximum City program as a guest instructor.

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